


The Problem With Plumbing

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-26
Updated: 2009-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 05:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3238592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Lester does not like to admit that maintenance trouble follows him everywhere. Sadly, it’s true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Problem With Plumbing

             James Lester had worked in a good many government departments, all temporarily, and the inhabitants- inmates, as one desperately bored Treasury worker had joked –had almost always been glad to see him go. It wasn’t exactly that they disliked him: he never seemed to fit in, he was too sharp and he moved too fast to try and make friends, and he set all their civil servants’ instincts on edge.

 

            No, it was that wherever he went, trouble did too. Usually trouble of the maintenance variety. In the Foreign Office’s building in Whitehall, it had been the unexpected deterioration of the ancient floorboards in the library, which had given up the ghost the day he took on his new job and had taken the Permanent Under-Secretary with them. In the offices of the shiny, brand-new Equality and Human Rights Commission, all ten of the newly installed toilets had refused to flush almost the moment he entered the building. In New Scotland Yard, a five-hour power cut had taken place within the week of his starting work there. In one of the Treasury buildings, a regrettable incident involving backed-up sewers. In the House of Commons... well, the less said about the House of Commons, the better.

 

            Lester liked to think that this was not his fault, and that he did not carry a personal poltergeist around with him (he did, of course, but none of his three children counted, and anyway even Nicky’s worst disasters paled in comparison with the spectacle of the Permanent Under-Secretary crashing through the Foreign Office floor.) He had been very pleased when no fewer than two years passed at the ARC without anything worse than a minor archaeopteryx-related mishap, a small fiasco with the fusebox or Miss Maitland, Miss Lewis, and Miss Wickes all simultaneously discovering that Lieutenant Owen looked _very_ good in a soaking wet shirt.  Of course, he had reflected gloomily, having been delayed so long, the major catastrophe when it came was sure to be spectacular.

 

            He had been _exactly right_.

 

            Following Lorraine towards what she had termed ‘a small situation, sir’, he found himself walking through a large puddle of brown water. It didn’t reek, so it was presumably not the contents of the ARC’s waste pipe. Grimacing, he soldiered on; just around the corner, he could hear the tell-tale sound of Norman the Maintenance Man really getting into the swing of his rant about the Heavenly Host and the dreadful things they did to the plumbing.

 

            He reached the end of the corridor, now ankle-deep in the water but determined to get to the bottom of the current disaster, and met Connor Temple going the other way. Even by Connor’s standards, he looked disreputable; he was filthy, drenched in the brown water, and appeared slightly shellshocked.

 

            “Mr. Temple. What happened?” Lester demanded. Norman the Maintenance Man was getting louder; he imagined a soothing interview with the indispensible Jenny Lewis and a fragrant cup of tea would be needed, and made a note to tell her so.

 

            “Um.” Connor looked sheepish; well, it was an improvement on rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights. “See, I went down to the basement to get something for the detector- ’cause I really think I could make it work over a wide range, you know- and I slipped, in this, like, really deep puddle, and it’s... kind of flooding the ARC, I think. It wasn’t this bad twenty minutes ago.”

 

            Lester sighed, and made another mental note, this one to call his daughter and let her know he would be late home; this was not a fiasco that would resolve itself. “Thank you, Mr. Temple. Please go and take a shower.”

 

            Connor sloshed past him, and Lester peered at the water around his ankles. Definitely rising. “Miss Wickes!”

 

            “Yes, sir?”

 

            “I think we should call in a plumber. Deal with it, if you would, and please inform Jenny that she will be required to liaise with the man- if not her, a trusted member of her team.”

 

            “Of course, sir.”

 

            There was the sound of Lorraine making a typically efficient escape, and Lester stared at the rising water and sighed again. A civil servant’s work is never done- particularly not where the plumbing is concerned.

 

            The sound of Norman’s voice told him he was close to the root of the problem, and it surely couldn’t get that much worse. He gritted his teeth, and waded onwards.


End file.
